getenv("USER") inconsistent for Terminal and Tracker

[ttcoder]

PrefServer (used by e.g. SoundPlay 4.9.15 and probably also the 4.7.3 build that's available from bebits) depends on variable $USER for calculating the filename of the preferences file. In other words, based on that variable it will create a file with the name e.g. "pref0:user:application:x-vnd.marcone-sndplayTT". But this piece of code..

void Preference::PrepareTransfer()
{
..
	user=getenv("USER");
	if(user)
		AddString("_prefserver:user",user);
	else
		AddString("_prefserver:user","<Mr.X>");
..
}

... behaves differently when run in Terminal (for debugging purposes) or when run normally (from Tracker): in Tracker the getenv() call returns NULL and as a result the filename ends up having "mister X" in it, so as a user, you're led to believe your preferences have been discarded (though in fact there's just two sets maintained at once).

This behavior of getenv() is not necessarily a "bug" per se, but it's clearly something that varies from BeOS (on BeOS 5 the variable is the same in either case; don't know if it was "null" in both cases or "non-null" in both cases but it was consistent).

I've hardcoded the 'username' inside PrefServer as a workaround for myself, so no big incentive to fix this... Filing a ticket in case it's useful to others tho.

This is hrev41843 by the way.

[luroh]

Move POSIX compatibility related tickets out of R1 milestone (FutureHaiku/Features).

[waddlesplash]

Has this been fixed following the launch_daemon merge?

[ttcoder]

Not sure.. Also #12534 might be related (though that one deals with spawns from input_server instead of spawns from tracker/terminal ?).

[leavengood]

I think #12534 is related and I have taken that ticket after some discussions in the forums. I will take this one too. This one should at least be fixable by moving USER and some other important environment variables into the launch_daemon. The launch_daemon does know the user due to the session information, but it does not set the environment variable. That is set by the /etc/profile shell script.

[pulkomandy]

Proposed fix: ​https://review.haiku-os.org/c/haiku/+/3958

[pulkomandy]

Fixed in hrev55130.